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Korea’s income disparity worsened by the fastest pace last year

Collected: 2017.05.25

Distributed: 2017.05.29

Source: Go Direct

Income inequality in South Korea worsened significantly last year, with the Gini coefficient rising at the fastest-ever pace since the data has been kept record in 2006, the government data showed on Thursday.

According to data on income distribution status in 2016 released by the Statistics Korea on Thursday, the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality for a country, jumped to 0.304 in 2016 from 0.295 in 2015, the highest figure since 2012 with 0.307. A reading of zero indicates complete income equality between the rich and poor while one means perfect inequality.

The nation’s income distribution ratio stood at 5.45 last year, up 0.34 from 5.11 in the previous year. It means that the richest 20 percent earned 5.45 times more than the bottom 20 percent.

The relative poverty rate, the ratio of the number of people whose income levels fall under the median income of the whole population, reached 14.7 percent in 2016, up 0.9 percentage point from the previous year of 13.8 percent. It was the highest figure since 2011 when it had stood at 15.2.

By Lee Seung-yoon

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